Publishing house of contemporary classical music

“Donemus is courageous and committed in the way it actively promotes new music…. While some other countries have equivalent organizations, I am not aware of any that is so proactive. Donemus sets a standard that others should follow.”
(Stephen Baggaley, Brisbane)

News

From October 23-November 27, the Donemus Foundation will hold the 2nd annual Donemus Academy for composers starting their career in the Netherlands. This year, we are happy to announce that November Music will collaborate with Donemus Academy, offering its participants a 50% discount…

From October 23-November 27, the Donemus Foundation will hold the 2nd annual Donemus Academy for composers starting their career in the Netherlands. There will be lectures, workshops, and discussions to support composers develop professional skills in the field. During the course, six different topics will be discussed in detail: Author rights, Funding, Programming, Publishing, Score editing and layout, and Entrepreneurship.

This year, we are happy to announce that November Music will collaborate with Donemus Academy, offering its participants a 50% discount on select concerts, as well as a complementary lecture by composer Heiner Goebbels, and many other exciting opportunities and special offers. Click the links below for more information and/or to apply to this year’s Donemus Academy!

General
The composer Rudi Martinus van Dijk was born in Culemborg, the Netherlands, on 27th of March 1932.

Education
He studied with Hendrik Andriessen and Leon Orthel at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague and first came to the fore as a composer at the age of 19 when his Sonatine for piano was performed at the International Gaudeamus Music Week. Van Dijk emigrated to Canada in 1953 and became a pupil of the American composer Roy Harris two years later. The Canada Council of Arts enabled Van Dijk to further his studies in Paris with Max Deutsch, a pupil of Schoenberg, while concluding his piano studies with Kendall Taylor in London.

Career
During the 1950s and 1960s, Van Dijk on a regular basis wrote music for and performed as pianist for radio and television for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Between 1964 and 1966, Van Dijk was active at the BBC in London involved particularly in educational television programs broadcast in many corners of the world including Australia. In 1966, Rudi van Dijk was appointed teacher of composition and piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. From that moment onward teaching became a part of his music life. In 1972, he was appointed teacher of composition and orchestration at Indiana University (USA), and in that same year took a similar post at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. It was not until 1985 that Van Dijk returned to Europe and after spending a year in Spain writing music he became composer in residence at Dartington Hall in Devon (UK).

Compositions
Van Dijk has created an impressive oeuvre. His music has become increasingly popular throughout England and Europe. One of the highlights of Van Dijk’s vocal music is ‘The Shadowmaker‘ (1977) commissioned and sung by the famous baritone Victor Braun in a performance with The Toronto Symphony under the baton of Mario Bernardi. September 1991 saw the Dutch premiere of the ‘Violin Concerto‘ (1984) at the Zeeuws Vlaanderen Festival with Polish-Dutch solo violinist Robert Szreder and the Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jan Stulen.

The national premiere of the ‘Four Epigrams‘ (1961) occurred in September of 1993 with The Hague Philarmonic conducted by Jac van Steen. The ‘Piano Concerto‘ (1994) was premiered in May of 1996 to acclaim with Geoffrey Douglas Madge as soloist and the North Netherlands Philarmonic with conductor Viktor Liberman. Hyperion recording artists The Raphael Ensemble, commissioned and performed the ‘Sextet‘ in England in 1998 and his ‘Sonata for Violin and Piano‘ was performed in recital at the Wigmore Hall and broadcast on BBC3 with Anthony Marwood and pianist Aleksander Madzar. As part of the International Chamber Series 2001 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Hyperion recording artists the Florestan Trio performed the premiere of Van Dijk’s ‘Piano Trio‘. 2003 saw the premiere in Germany of Rudi van Dijk’s final work ‘Kreiten’s Passion‘, a monumental piece of music for baritone, orchestra and full choir.

Awards
In 1953, Van Dijk won the First Prize in the Gaudeamus composition competition with his ‘Sonatina‘ for piano. In 1962 and 1963, he received the Ohio Award for Background Music.

General
From his childhood, Roland Kuit has always been fascinated by the phenomenon of sound. Surrounded with instruments like a grand piano, violins, double bass, trombone and guitars, he started to experiment with these sounds and the tape recorder. He was 6 years old at that time. This early playground formed a conceptual brain scheme for the rest of his life: sound-experiment, experiment-sound.

Education
At early age he started to play the flute and was accepted at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague continuing his sound research in extended flute techniques. Here he met the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Berio, Dick Raaijmakers and other composers in electronic music. Experiencing limitations in acoustic music, Roland bought his first synthesizer. The ARP 2600.

At that moment Roland made a decisive step in his career by subscribing at the prestigious Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands, one of longest-running research and production hubs on the European electroacoustic music scene. It was at the end of formalism, serial music and new ways in sound creation and composition had to be explored. Under the influence of director Gottfried Michael Koenig this post-formal framework was opened for experiment. Roland studied analogue and digital sound science. Synthesis- and studio techniques next to composition.

Compositions
At the IRCAM in Paris, Roland experienced new ways in acoustic composition and research of physical modelling in spectral music. Earlier he had accomplished a virtual string quartet with use of analogue synthesis. Analogue synthesized sounds have something alive in the sound due behavior of the apparatus. Sounds created by digital means seemed to be a kind of static so Roland used his knowledge to apply his techniques in the digital realm. His morphing between different techniques and shaping of algorithms became Roland’s signature. His output spans composition through sound art, sound-architectural installations, collaboration with experimental artists, designers and scientists, acousmatic performance and live electroacoustic improvisation.

Career
Research, imagination and association in a technical way made him write his books about combining synthesis techniques. Lecturing at diverse universities and creating radio programs about electronic music giving him a platform to discuss his conceptual worlds.
He performs on concert stages and in art galleries and museums. His books and music are published by Donemus, Publishing House of Dutch Contemporary Classical Music.

Latest publications

Artist Statement
“Music composing is for me an absolutely reflexive activity. It is the sound representation of my personal resonance with the surrounding social environment, memory of culture and experience of introspection. The formation of my compositional technique has been influenced by classical music education, years of playing in a rock band and projects with contemporary artists. Now I see no contradiction between these “schools”, on the contrary, this crossover experience has made me free from the domination of one of them. Rock-n-roll and visual art scene has helped me in more reactive attitude to life and academic education – in creativity in form, structural thinking and sound searching (extended instrumental and vocal techniques).”

General
Vladimir Rannev was born in Moscow, USSR, 1970, and has been living since 1998 in Saint-Petersburg (Russia).

Education
In 2003, he graduated from the composition department of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied with Professor Boris Tishchenko. From 2003 to 2005, he studied electronic music at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne with Professor Hans Ulrich Humpert.

Career
Rannev works also in theatre, where he took part in numerous staging projects in several theaters, such as Alexandrinski Theatre (St. Petersburg) and the Theatre Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). Rannev works also as a lecturer at the St. Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and the St. Petersburg State University. He is a member of the StRes (Structure Resistance) group of composers (Russia).

Awards
Rannev is a recipient of a Gartow Stiftung scholarship (Germany, 2002), the winner of the Salvatore Martirano Award of the University Illinois (USA, 2009), Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award (Switzerland, 2010). His opera ‘Two acts’ to a libretto by Dmitri A. Prigov was premiered in the Hermitage Museum in November 2012 (with Ensemble Mosaik and conductor Enno Poppe) and took the Grand-Prix of Sergey Kouryohin Prize 2013. The opera ‘Drillalians’ was nominated for the National Theatre Golden Mask Prix 2016.